35 Global Modernity: Arif Dirlik

Rakesh M Krishnan

1. Who is Dirlik?

Arif Dirlik (b 1940)

“What I mean by global modernity is that we try to describe the universalization of the contradictions of capitalist modernity. Globalization is not unification so much as the fragmentation of modernity. It is really a new phase and I think it has to do with the globalization of capital. Postmodernity and post coloniality are aspects of this global modernity.”

Dirlik (2003a:91)

Arif Dirlik is a Turkish historian who has specialised on 20th century Chinese history. Dirlik left Turkey to pursue physics in United States. However he was influenced by certain world developments like Vietnamese and Chinese Revolution and decided to pursue history at the University of Rochester. His intellectual pursuit was taking place within the decolonised world and this context made him think about the form of modernity and developmentalism happening in the world. He is a prolific writer and a short indicative list of his works is given later.

Dirlik’s study of the Chinese history made him reflect on the form and trajectory of modernity. We will be discussing his idea of global modernity to critically engage with the concept of modernity. He engages modernity in a historical mode to understand the form of modernity. Globalisation- globalisation of capitalist modernity and concomitant fragmentation based on claims of difference as a process throws challenge to the Euro/American conceptualisation of modernity. This is the context of Dirlik’s engagement with modernity. In doing so, he criticises post colonialism since in asserting differences and identities it looses focus on the structures of capitalism and domination which creates differences and politics of identity. Dirlik through his global modernity tries to straddle way from the limitations of post colonialism.

Additionally, it is productive to understand how decolonisation as a process and as an intellectual environment impacted him (see his interview: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/minnesota_ review/v058/58.dirlik.pdf); thereby providing an insight into how theorisation on decolonisation in a decolonised environment led to a re- reading of our received understandings. An additional source of information on his personal and intellectual background is http://books.google.co.in/books?id=cIV4DWKS3IAC&pg=PR1&dq=fifty+key+thinkers+on+globalisation&hl=en&sa=X&ei=GQciVOanOM-VuAScwIKYAg&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=dirlik&f=false.

Post-Colonial Critique: A Background to Dirlik

Postcolonial criticism has quickly spent its critical power, however, as its questioning of totalizing solutions has turned into exclusion from criticism of the historical and the structural contexts for the local, without reference to which criticism itself is deprived of critical self- consciousness and, as it celebrates itself, knowingly or unknowingly also celebrates the conditions that produced it. Whether postcolonial criticism has been appropriated by those who did not share its initial critical, intentions is a moot question, as its methodological denial of structures and its methodological individualism have facilitated such appropriation.

Dirlik (1997: ix)

Structural context used by Dirlik to critique global capitalism is also used by him to engage and critique with post-colonialism as a frame of reference. Dirlik’s reservation of post- colonialism is illustrated by the above quote. It is feared by him that post-colonialism is imprisoned in the questions and politics of identity, ethnicity and cultural differences and has lost sight on structures and totality within which certain social groups and collectives assert By not addressing the questions of structures and totality, Dirlik feels that post-colonialism as being practised especially in American universities, has rejected the possibilities of alternatives to the form and direction of global transformations.

Post-colonialism, according to Dirlik in, “its preoccupation with local encounters and the politics of identity rules out a thoroughgoing critique of the structures of capitalism, or of other structurally shaped modes of exploitation and oppression, while also legitimizing arguments against collective identities that are necessary to struggles against domination and hegemony. Ironically, the call for attention to “difference” has ended up rendering “difference” itself into a metahistorical principle, making it nearly impossible to distinguish one kind of “difference” from another politically” (Dirlik, 1997: ix). What Dirlik is trying to say is that modernity, capitalism and power in a post-colonial discourse because an issue of cultural studies rather than that of political economy. It is important to note that Dirlik uses the resources of history to understand global transformations since it will avoid ideological and metaphysical resolutions and alternatives.

2. What is Global Modernity?

[…] global modernity (which I take to be in the singular) is a product of globalization rather than its harbinger, and it bears upon it the contradictions of the history has produced it- both as the realization of that history and as its negation, the most crucial issue being its relationship to the colonial past. Globalization may be viewed as the process whereby modernity –capitalist modernity- has gone global, universalizing not only the material and ideological practices but also the contradictions of modernity, including the very negations of its claims to universality. Global modernity may promise liberation from the past globally, including from the past of modernity itself, but it also bears the stamp of the colonial economically, politically, socially, and culturally, perpetuating past inequalities while adding to them new ones of its own.

Dirlik (2007: 7)

According to Dirlik (2003b:276), “Modernity has been globalizing all along, but the realization of global modernity was obstructed by two products of capitalist modernity itself: colonialism and socialism.” Decolonisation opened up the spaces for the erstwhile marginalised voices to emerge, however socialism as an ideology which had underpinned the decolonisation of many nation-states did not permit the growth of capitalism. The decline of socialism is important since it rules out the possibility of organising state-market-society relationships outside the capitalist framework. With the collapse of socialism as a competing ideology to capitalism in 1980s, modernity as a project was globalised. However, globalisation of modernity became equivalent to capitalism in this context. Furthermore, it is argued that globalisation of the capitalist modernity is the reason for the increased questioning of modernity as a universal project. Capitalist modernity, as agreed by various scholars, is a condition that governs us globally

A historical investigation of modernity is undertaken by Dirlik to suggest that the Euro/American or European modernity is a consequence of Eurasian modernity. European modernity is one among the many possibilities that emerged out of the Eurasian modernity and it became dominant by sidelining other forms of modernities that competed with European modernity. Dirlik (2008) provides a critical discussion on the contemporary perspectives of modernity and it can be used as a background to understand his concept of global modernity. Discussions on multiple modernities alert us about the how modernity is formed. These discussions attempt to sensitise the European factor in not only making it a dominant form but also how the European terrain made it dynamic especially in fleshing out the capitalist form of modernity that was a result of particular European conditions. Dirlik notices a contradiction in the present state of capitalist modernity; he indicates that capitalist modernity is at its zenith however it has also produced revisionist ideas of modernity – cultural claims to alternate modernities. Dirlik makes an elaborate statement on global modernity in his work Global Modernity: Modernity in the Age of Global Capitalism (2007). He also asserts that globalisation is an ongoing process and identifies that the challenge is to “achieve a globality beyond the colonial” (2007: 8).

3. Globalisation of Modernity

Dirlik maps the shift of discourse from modernisation to globalisation in his book Global Modernity (2007). He disaggregates the term ‘global modernity’ to demonstrate what he means by the terms ‘global’ and ‘modernity’. In his introductory remarks he refrains from defining globalisation, however, he uses it as both paradigm and discourse to describe the historical process of global movement of people, ideas, technologies and products. It is used as a trope to capture the contemporary socio-political and economic imaginaries. Modernity in global modernity refers to the modernisation process that emanated from Europe.

It is argued that globalisation has superseded modernity in recognising the possibility of a non-Eurocentric world (ibid: 14-15) in the form of “multicentred” or “decentered” world. Globalisation has become the new metric for understanding change and social imaginary; thereby globalisation as a concept replaced modernisation in measuring social change. Dirlik contends that globalisation as a process is not the end of Eurocentric modernity rather it obfuscates the inequities and problems created by capitalist modernity, and creates new forms of economic and political exploitation and marginalisation by postponing its emancipatory potentials. Nevertheless, globalisation discourse is a response to the re-configured global socio-economic and political relationships and inter-connections effected by capitalist modernity.

It is suggested that the significance of globalisation lies in its recognition of alternate claims to modernity in the form of asserting the cultural and social values of a particular nation-state as against the claims of cultural and social values attached to capitalist modernity. After examining the different narratives of globalisation, both its critics and advocates, Dirlik suggests that we need a new language to grasp the change that is happening. His concern lies in how to address the problems of the marginalised people under the conditions of globalisation. Global modernity as a concept is a possible solution.

The condition of global modernity, in recognizing alternative claims to modernity (not to be confused with “alternative modernities”), implies some measure of equality among nation- states. It might suggest, therefore, that unlike in an earlier era of colonialism or neo- colonialism, nations should be able to attend to demarginalizing the marginalized in order to achieve their goals of integration, development, and social coherence. Global modernity, moreover, has witnessed the recovery of the continued legitimacy, relevance, and prestige of national and civilizational traditions that has been discredited earlier under conditions of Eurocentric modernity.

Dirlik (2007:33)

The failure of nation-states in the contemporary period in addressing the above mentioned concern is identified in the alignment of the new social class with the interest of the transnational capital and the role of international economic order.

4. Framing Global Modernity

In this section we will see how Dirlik conceptualise global modernity.

Over the past decade, discourses of globalization and postcoloniality have diminished the value of the concept of colonialism not only for the present but in our understanding of the past. The history of the past five hundred years has been reworked as a march towards globality, and the power relations that shaped global history have disappeared into local contingencies, deprived of the structural centrality assigned to them in earlier historiography.

Dirlik (2007: 84)

It is in this background, Dirlik constructs his concept of global modernity and it is done,

To capture the present reality that is not only a developed form of the past but also breaks from it due to the differences in the claims of modernity and its future.
It is understood as a singular term, signifying the presence of global commonalties.
It is also an attempt to overcome the teleological assumptions of globalisation process.
Globalisation is seen from the perspective of colonial past – colonial modernity rather than seeing colonialism as a phase of globalisation.

The features of global modernity (ibid: 94-97) that can be used to distinguish it from earlier forms of modernity and globalisation are,

i. Global modernity is the resting place of globalisation.

Globalisation or globalised capitalism has become the grounds for the contestation among different claims on modernity and global modernity, unlike other forms of modernity represent such a phase.

ii. Unlike earlier forms of modernity-Eurocentric modernity; global modernity is marked by ‘temporal contemporaneity’.

Different nation-states with different levels of socio-economic developments, under conditions of global capitalist economy have claimed that their cultures or traditions are compatible with the project of modernity thereby claiming equivalence. This breaks with the earlier understanding of modernity wherein different nation-states were placed at different points in the tradition-modern continuum.

iii. Globalisation of capitalism has reconfigured spatialisation of global relations.

Earlier the world was divided into three worlds, first world comprising the capitalist countries, second world comprising the socialist countries and third world comprising the developing and ex-colonial countries. Dirlik argues that there are now first world features in third world like Shanghai and third world features in the first world like New Orleans.

iv. Groups of people across nation-states are being left out of the global economy and global modernity tries to capture it.

It is argued by Dirlik that global modernity indicates the end of colonialism due to decolonisation however it continues in the present, in the form of colonial modernity. Colonial modernity persists through the mechanics of capitalist modernity.

To be sure, Dirlik argues that modernity is a product of historical processes and he locates modernity in a global scale thereby he coins the terms global modernity (Coleman and Sajed, 2012:88). In theorising modernity in these terms, Dirlik disagrees with the theorisation of modernity as multiple or alternate modernities. Proponents of multiple modernities argue that modernity is not Eurocentric and the local socio-economic and political conditions or processes of modernisation also play a significant role in the shaping of modernity. Whereas, Dirlik argues that modernity is a product of the interaction of the European idea of modern and the local conditions mediated through colonialism and capitalism. He asserts the fact that modernity has a European core. Capitalist modernity through the processes of colonialism has become globalised and hence the contemporary is defined as global modernity.

5. Multiple Modernities and Global Modernity

The downgrading of a Eurocentric modernity, accompanied by culturally driven claims on modernity, goes a long way toward explaining the contradictions to which I referred earlier, and why those contradictions may appear differently to participants in the new dialogue on modernity. On the other hand, too much preoccupation with Eurocentrism or colonialism also disguises fundamental questions of contemporary modernity that cut across so-called cultural divides, especially as the locations of modernity and culture are themselves thrown into question with the reconfigurations of economic and political organization globally.

Dirlik (2003b:284)

Dirlik (2003b:279) argues that the “institutional and intellectual content of modernity” is being contested “even as modernity is globalised”. He makes this statement in the context of the resurgence of tradition among the ‘modernising’ nation-states. Dirlik is trying to raise the question on the idea of modernity as defined by the Euro-American scholars, who suggested the distancing of the tradition in the pursuit of modernity.

Scholars like Shumel Eisenstadt and Bjorn Wittrock tried to grapple with the presence of tradition in the modernising societies. Dirlik (2003b) quotes Eisenstadt’s introductory piece in a journal to suggest that the latter claims that the process of modernisation has led to locally conditioned institutions and processes of Euro/American modernity. The structural differences are considered to be significant and are understood to be an inevitable part of the project of modernity. The underlining point made by Eisenstadt is that there is no single form of modernity and in fact there are multiple forms of modernity or ‘multiple modernities’ with different patterns. The following quote provided by Dirlik will capture the gist of Eisenstadt’s argument.

The actual developments in modernizing societies have refuted the homogenizing and hegemonic assumptions of this Western program of modernity. While a general trend toward structural differentiation developed across a wide range of institutions in most of these societies . . . the ways in which these arenas were defined and organized varied greatly . . . giving rise to multiple institutional and ideological patterns. These patterns did not constitute simple continuations in the modern era of the traditions of their respective societies. Such patterns were distinctively modern, though greatly influenced by specific cultural premises, traditions and historical experiences. All developed distinctly modern dynamics and modes of interpretation, for which the original Western project constituted the crucial (and usually ambivalent) reference point.

Eisenstadt (2000: 1), cited in Dirlik (2003b: 281)

Wittrock agrees with Eisenstadt as far as viewing modernity as a common condition is regarded. However, he poses two questions- whether to understand modernity as an ‘epoch’ or as ‘distinct phenomena and processes in a given society at a given time’ (ibid: 281). Dirlik argues that. “In order to substantiate modernity, it then becomes necessary to locate it in certain institutions, or modes of thinking, which is Wittrock’s choice (as it is of Anthony Giddens, with ‘reflexivity’ as a distinguishing feature of modernity) (Giddens, 1990). The important question here is to shift the location of modernity from nations, regions and civilizations (themselves the creations of a Eurocentric modernity) to institutions and ways of thinking – in other words, discourses conceived both in linguistic and institutional terms.” (ibid: 281). According to Dirlik, Wittrock suggests that there is nothing like European or American modernity since they also represent non-modern components in them. This assertion makes modernity a de-territoralised concept thereby enabling its movement across national and cultural boundaries.

The increased usage of globalisation as a trope to define the contemporary time makes Dirlik attentive to on the concept of ‘multiple modernities’. In fact he argues that, “Globalization differs from modernization by relinquishing a Eurocentric teleology to accommodate the possibility of different historical trajectories in the unfolding of modernity. But that still leaves open the question of what provides this world with a commonality which, if anything, is more powerful in its claims than anything that could be imagined in the past” (ibid: 284). However, it is argued that the process of globalisation implies globalisation of capitalism. For instance, he suggests that the rise of East Asian economies added credibility to the thesis of multiple modernities. Dirlik, asserts that multiplicity of modernities never challenges the global power relations that are defined by capitalism. Multiple modernities is understood by Dirlik as be an exercise to manage the cultural diversities among the modernising societies.

Arguments for ‘multiple modernities’, no less than arguments for globalization, state their case in terms of cultural differences that are aligned around spatialities that are the products themselves of modernization: nations, cultures, civilizations, and ethnicities. In identifying ‘multiplicity’ with boundaries of nations, cultures, civilizations and ethnicities, the idea of ‘multiple modernities’ seeks to contain challenges to modernity by conceding the possibility of culturally different ways of being modern. While this is an improvement over an earlier Eurocentric modernization discourse, it perpetuates the culturalist biases of the latter, relegating to the background social and political differences that are the products not just of past legacies but of modernity, and cut across national or civilizational boundaries. The framing of modernities within the boundaries of reified cultural entities feeds on, and in turn legitimizes, the most conservative cultural claims on modernity. What an idea of multiple modernities ignores is that the question of modernity is subject to debate within the cultural, civilizational, national or ethnic spaces it takes as its units of analysis.

Dirlik (2003b: 285)

Having said so, Dirlik suggests the following,

We need to remember also that the present is witness not just to revivals of traditions, but also to an enthusiastic embrace by elites globally of the promises of technological modernity. Even the re-assertion of traditions often takes the form of articulating those traditions to the demands of a global capitalism. Where there is a stubborn clinging to imagined traditions against the demands of modernity, as in the case for instance of the Taliban in Afghanistan or the Iranian Revolution in its more extreme phases, the result is not acceptance but isolation. On the other hand, those native scholars who seek to ‘Sinicize’ or ‘Islamicize’ sociology quickly find out that such goals cannot be accomplished without a simultaneous ‘sociologization’ of Chinese values or of Islam (Ma, 1985; Gole, 2000). The very process of nativization reveals the impossibility of sustaining reified, holistic notions of traditions, which already have been transformed by modernity, and appear most prominently as sites of conflict between different social interests and different visions of the modern.

Dirlik (2003b: 286)

It is suggested that neither modernity nor its globalisation end due to the above mentioned problems. However, globalisation has provided a platform for the former subjects of colonial modernity and the modernisation process to assert themselves. The negotiations among the differently placed nations are mediated by the process of capitalism and have led to global modernity.

6. Global South: History beyond Eurocentrism

The term ‘Global South’ is used by many scholars to describe the developing countries. In this section we will attempt to understand the term ‘Global South’ from the perspective of Arif Dirlik wherein he maps the shift of the descriptive label for the developing countries or modernising countries from ‘Third World’ to ‘Global South’ and the attendant conceptual and ideological shifts. According to Dirlik.

The term “global South”—or at least the “South” component of it—goes back to the 1970s, and is entangled in its implications with other terms that post- World War II modernization discourse and revolutionary movements generated to describe societies that seemed to face difficulties in achieving the economic and political goals of either capitalist or socialist modernity. It was largely equivalent to, but not identical with, the popular designation for such societies in the 1950s and 1960s (“Third World”) to which it bore a contradictory relationship.1 It was popularized by the so-called Brandt Commission reports published in 1980 and 1983, both of which bore “North-South” in their titles. The reports advocated large infusions of capital from the North to the South to enable their modernization. I am not certain when “global” was attached to the “South” to form the contemporary compound term; the predicate suggests some relationship to the discourse of globalization that was on the emergence in the 1990s. The United Nations Development Program initiative of 2003, “Forging a Global South,” has played an important part in drawing attention to the concept, as has interactivity among societies of the “South” establishing their own initiatives in pursuing developmental agenda.

Dirlik (2007: 13-14)

Above citation show us the background of the term ‘Global South’. ‘Third World’ was a term coined by Alfred Sauvy in 1952 to describe formerly colonised countries from that of capitalist and socialist countries (Dirlik, 2007:14). When compared to ‘Third World’, ‘Global South’ indicates a different global order. Third World, as suggested earlier was used to refer to those countries that are neither capitalist nor socialist in its orientation and had a choice between these two alternatives, whereas, Global South indicates a North-South division of the global order with capitalist modernity or neoliberalism being the only alternative. These two terms therefore indicate a shift in the global relations of capitalism and domination.

It is pertinent to note that the so-called Third World had a self description that was different from the assigned meaning. According to Dirlik, in the Bandung Conference of 1955, the nation-states that constituted Third World asserted that Third World could also be a third pathway towards modernity. However the Brandt Commission (constituted in 1977 and the report was published in 1981) was of the opinion that there is an impending global economic crisis and the way out is to reach out to the Third World or the South. So as to aid them, by doing so, that is through saving the Third World or the South the global disaster can be averted. This orientation towards the modernising societies by the modernised societies changed the meaning of being Third World or Southern nation-state and society. It capped the potential of Third World or the South in affirming and charting its own course towards modernity and now was linked to a ‘benevolent’ capitalist system.

Global capitalist processes especially globalisation accelerated inter-connections among various nation-states and societies. Even though the global order of domination and production system was still dominated by the West, there was the creation of pockets of prosperity in the South and pockets of deprivation in the North. Global flow of products, technology and people went beyond national territories and created various flows, networks and nodes of production, consumption and accumulation.

Needless to say, since 1990s capitalism in the form of Neoliberalism, a product of Washington consensus became the leitmotif of international economic and political order. However, Dirlik draws our attention to Peoples Republic of China and posit that the Chinese model of development has accomplished economic development without compromising national autonomy. He discusses the various dimensions of the PRC’s model of development, what is pertinent to our discussion is his argument that Chinese model or the ‘Beijing Consensus’ could be an alternate pathway to neoliberalism.

you can view video on Global Modernity: Arif Dirlik

References

Dirlik, Arif. 1997. The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism. Westview Press: Colorado.
Dirlik, Arif. 2003b. Global Modernity? Modernity in an Age of Global Capitalism European Journal of Social Theory, Vol 6 (3): 275-292.
Dirlik, Arif. 2007a. Global Modernity: Modernity in the Age of Global Capitalism. Paradigm Publishers: London.
Dirlik, Arif. 2008. Contemporary Perspectives on Modernity: A Critical Discussion, Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies. Vol.8 (1): 89-103.
Williams, Jeffery J. 2003a A Sense of History: An Interview with Arif Dirlik, Minnesota Review, No 58-60: 75-92.

Selected publications

Books

Revolution and History: The Origins of Marxist Historiography in China, 1919-1937. Berkeley: University of California Press. (1978).
The Origins of Chinese Communism, New York: Oxford University Press. (1989)
After the Revolution: Waking to Global Capitalism, Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press. (1994)
The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism, Boulder: Westview Press. (1997)
Postmodernism and China. Duke University Press (2000)
Global Modernity: Modernity in the Age of Global Capitalism. Paradigm Press (2007) Representative articles

—— (1985). “The Universalisation of a Concept:‘Feudalism’to ‘Feudalism’in Chinese Marxist Historiography”. The Journal of Peasant Studies 12 (2-3): 197–227.

—— (1995). “Confucius in the Borderlands: Global Capitalism and the Reinvention of Confucianism”. Boundary 2: 229–273.

—— (1996). “Reversals, Ironies, Hegemonies: Notes on the Contemporary Historiography of Modern China”. Modern China: 243–284.

—— (1996). “Chinese History and the Question of Orientalism”. History and Theory: 96–118.

—— (1999). “Is There History after Eurocentrism?: Globalism, Postcolonialism, and the Disavowal of History”. Cultural Critique: 1–34.

—— (1999). “How the Grinch Hijacked Radicalism: Further Thoughts on the Postcolonial”. Postcolonial Studies: Culture, Politics, Economy 2 (2): 149–163.

—— (2002). “History without a Center? Reflexions on Eurocentrism”. in E. Fuchs et al.(eds.), Across Cultural Borders: historiography in global perspective. Lanham MD: Rowman & Lttlefield.

—— (2004). “China’s Critical Intelligentsia”. New Left Review.

—— (2004). “American Studies in the Time of Empire”. Comparative American Studies 2 (3): 287–302.

—— (2006). “Performing the World: Reality and Representation in the Making of World History”. Journal of World History 16 (4): 391–410.

—— (2006). “Timespace, Social Space, and the Question of Chinese Culture”. Monumenta Serica: 417–433.

—, Anarchism, Encyclopedia Britannica.

(Source: Wikipedia page on Arif Dirlik

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arif_Dirlik)

Links for further explorations

Interview

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/minnesota_review/v058/58.dirlik.pdf

Arif Dirlik at CSDS on The Idea of a Chinese Model

https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=ZSoskvxWSdk